Category Archives: Technical illustration

Acqualux Drains Wasted Time out of Shower Design with SolidWorks and 3DVIA

In these economic times, imagine what a 25 to 40% documentation process reduction could mean to the competitiveness of your company.

Take a look at what Acqualux, a UK based company, has been able to achieve with 3DVIA Composer. The full press release can be viewed here. The following is a notable highlight from this announcement:

“We have to provide layman-level instructions to the end customer as well as detailed instructions for our service and quality control people so they can walk consumers through the build when they don’t understand something,” said Aqualux Design Manager Neil Harrison. “3DVIA Composer was a huge leap forward for us in producing documentation. Before, we had to bring isolated views from SolidWorks into an illustration program and clean them up to show the tools and the bathroom views so customers could see them in context. That was very labor-intensive and time consuming. 3DVIA cuts 25 to 40 percent from that process, depending on the product, and with much less aggravation and higher quality manuals with extra instructions and graphics.”

3DVIA your iPod #78: “Linked Vector Images”

In Markus’ third installment, watch how he creates interactive 2D documents by using the linking ability in 3DVIA Composer. We know that not every use case can utilize interactive 3D documents. Many times you still need traditional 2D output, and you can see how easy it is with 3DVIA Composer to create hotspots in the output so that you can create a series of wonderfully connected 2D technical illustrations.

Thanks Markus, this is a great tip!

Customers speak out!

Recently, I received some user comments to several blog posts. Normally I strive for non-censorsed, authentic content. Unfortunately, this user insisted on making personal attacks at me as well as other rude comments that do not bear repetition.

Among the fluff, this user did manage to articulate a point, and here is the text:

All I read about is how everyone else is terrible and Seemage is great, but I don’t hear discussions about business value that you guys have delivered. You should really start taking the high road, as I know Seemage is a decent product but this kind of lame, baseless contempt for the competition is becoming a standing joke amongst my peers. For those of us looking to buy Seemage, it would help if I didn’t have to explain to my executives why your blog always sounds like you guys have your backs against the wall….Help a brother out!

So to “help the brother out”, here is a recent email that I received from a customer, explaining why 3DVIA Composer (aka Seemage), is great:

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3DVIA your iPod #75: “Really fast ballooning”

This week, Tod continues to build out his technical illustration that he started last week. He covers several options for ballooning the illustration, and then outputs the view to line art format.

Watch closely as he performs the following:

  • Sets up the default balloon widthC
  • Creates Bill Of Material id’s for different levels of the assembly
  • Creates BOM id’s using part names and meta properties
  • Controls the how the balloons are aligned
  • Quickly changes the styling of the balloons
  • Updates a view with his changes
  • Outputs the view to an interactive line art (CGM4 or SVG) while controlling the desired line weights of outlines, silhouettes, and shadows

It takes Tod less then 5 minutes to cover these topics and generate a fully interactive technical illustration. And if that isn’t fast enough, it would take him less than 30 seconds if he wasn’t providing the instructions!

Now think about how much more productive your technical illustrators could be if they were using 3DVIA Composer…

3DVIA your iPod #74: “Really fast exploded views”

Have you ever spent hours to create a complicated exploded view, with thrust lines and callouts, only to have to re-do it when engineering makes a change on you?

This week, Tod Cruikshank shows us how to quickly create exploded views for technical illustrations. While in animation mode, he uses an innovative set of 3DVIA Composer functions to complete his demonstration. In particular he:

  • uses “associative paths” to create jagged thrust lines in one easy step;
  • uses a combination of assembly motion and part motion to create those thrust lines;
  • moves one part in an assembly, and then quickly applies that placement to other selected parts;
  • creates convenient hot keys to further increase the pace of his work.

When I first saw this technique, I was blown away at how fast these illustrations can be created. I hope you are just as amazed when you watch this week’s podcast. If you are looking to reduce your time to market, use 3DVIA Composer to speed up your technical illustration process!